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The ruling BJP has launched a strong counter-attack against Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party dismissing as “malicious” its allegation that Finance Minister Arun Jaitley presided over massive corruption in Delhi’s cricket body, the DDCA, as its president.

The party and Mr Jaitley accused Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal of attempting to whip up “political hysteria” to divert attention from corruption in his office.

In a post on Facebook, Mr Jaitley said, “Delhi CM Kejriwal seems to believe in untruth and defamation, delivered in language that borders on hysteria. No personal allegation was ever made against me nor did I ever feel the need of contradicting it.”

He also said, “The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO), under the UPA regime, investigated and could not find a shred of evidence against me.”

Union Minister Smriti Irani said at a press conference that “no fraud has happened” under Mr Jaitley’s chairmanship of the Delhi and District Cricket Association or DDCA and added, “The BJP resolutely stands behind Arun Jaitley and publicly condemns the malicious intent of AAP to deflect public attention from a corrupt officer working with Arvind Kejriwal.”

That attempt, she said, “goes totally against the values of the Anna Hazare movement,” from which Mr Kejriwal’s political career sprang.

Ms Irani spoke soon after the AAP fielded top leaders to assert that the CBI raid on Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s Principal Secretary Rajender Kumar on Tuesday was linked to a DDCA file in the Chief Minister’s office.

“BJP asked Manmohan Singh to resign over collective responsibility. We demand that PM Modi remove his corrupt minister,” said AAP leader Kumar Vishwas, alleging that, “This scam was about siphoning off money by creating fake companies between 1999 and 2013 and one year after that. This went on for 15 years.”

Ms Irani said the documents “being waved” by the AAP leaders were not from their own investigation, but from a DDCA report which does not mention Mr Jaitley.